Challenges in education; Alcoholism

A recent study of alcoholics or excessive drinkers has turned up more interesting facts. There may be more alcoholics than we think. Patients attempt to hide it. Family sued him to hide it and it may be very important these type of treatment you're going to use even though the primary problem that the patient comes in for may not be our call that needs to be asked. He needs to be looked at. I think then we can say also that the incidence of prevalence of alcoholism is probably greater than the figures that are reported taken from hospital statistics or outpatient clinic statistics. They're probably more alcoholics generally thought to be the speaker is Dr. Robert Fowler. In a moment he continues his thoughts about the labeled alcoholic. Challenges in education presented by Duke University.

Here with today's featured is Charles past based on evaluations by a psychiatrist who sell more than 150 patients in a year at a hospital in Durham North Carolina. It was found that many times a patient labeled alcoholic or excessive drinker was often confused as to why he had been brought to the hospital. Dr. Robert Fowler assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke explains one thing we did discover was that many of the patients who later were diagnosed as alcoholic had really a vague idea of why they came to the hospital anyway they were frequently brought This is so also there were excessive drinkers. But more specifically for the alcoholic they were brought to the hospital by some member of the family rather than by them to a primary motivating force which some member of the family are some friends they didn't says were rather confused about why they were brought to the hospital.

And they had no clear idea themselves of what they wanted from being in the hospital although there were few differences between those patients who were classified as excessive drinkers and labeled alcoholics. The study revealed that admission to the hospital was biased. Those that were labeled alcoholic by the admitting physician were less often admitted to the hospital in fact much less often only rarely were patients who were labeled alcoholic admitted to the hospital whereas those that were manifested excessive drinking but did not get the label of alcohol and were admitted as frequently as I do. Sackey I treat patients. Dr. Fowler explains one reason why the designated alcoholic might cause a treatment bias among physicians. Our data supports the feeling that I think other people have had many physicians have their own built in prejudice to whatever it is we use to make up the diagnoses of our colleagues and the

factors that may make up their prejudiced I think a more complicated and we can only. Make a conjecture as to why this is so. One of the reasons I think that physicians have difficulty treating the patient who is an alcoholic is that there are no few good treatments for alcoholism at the present time. And of course we know that under the rubric of alcoholic patients with many different problems the symptom itself alcohol can cover a multitude of other kinds of problems. One type of treatment course home for all patients who have this symptom of excessive drinking or alcoholism. The multiplicity of treatment forms the lack of good results from most of them would lead to a bias potential treatment bias among physicians according to the study.

Excessive drinkers not diagnosed alcoholic are judged more interesting and better candidates for therapy and hospitalization was more often considered necessary for them. This is Charles Brazill. What challenges in education from Duke University. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.